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Whistleblowing

Whistleblowing. Two conceptions of loyalty:.

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Whistleblowing

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  1. Whistleblowing

  2. Two conceptions of loyalty: • The employee owes unqualified loyalty to the firm: “Some critics are now busy eroding another support of free enterprise – the loyalty of a management team, with its unifying values of cooperative work. Some of the enemies of business now encourage an employee to be disloyal to the enterprise. They want to create suspicion and disharmony, and pry into the proprietary interests of the business. However this is labeled – industrial espionage, whistle blowing, or professional responsibility – it is another tactic for spreading disunity and creating conflict.” – James Roche, GM

  3. The employee owes no loyalty to the firm. – Ronald Duska • The Argument: • (Presupposed df.: loyalty requires sacrifice for the sake of another.) • Loyalty must be reciprocated to be owed. • Corporations won’t reciprocate employee loyalty. • Therefore, employees have no obligations of loyalty.

  4. Defining Whistleblowing • Whistleblowing is: a practice in which employees who know that their company is engaged in activities that a) cause unnecessary harm, b) are in violation of human rights, c) are illegal, d) run counter to the defined purpose of the institution, or e) are otherwise immoral, inform the public or some governmental agency of those activities. (p. 554, Duska)

  5. Another: • Whistle-blowing is the voluntary release of nonpublic information, as a moral protest, by a member or former member of an organization outside the normal channels of communication to an appropriate audience about illegal and/or immoral conduct in the organization or conduct in the organization that is opposed in some significant way to the public interest. (p. 555, Boatright)

  6. Paradigms: • Daniel Ellsberg – leaked the Pentagon Papers • Mark Felt – Deep Throat, from Watergate • Roger Boisjoly

  7. Examples • 1. Morris Baslow (engineer) • 2. David Franklin (microbiologist, Warner-Lambert) •  3. Coleen Rawley (FBI) •  4. Kermit Vandivier (technical writer, B.F. ) •  5.Cynthia Cooper (internal auditor, Worldcom, p. 555) •  6. Barron Stone (from Duke Power, p. 555) •  7. Noreen Harrington (from Stern, p. 556) • 8. Sherron Watkins, Enron; Robert Rester, McWane

  8. Bowie’s Justification Conditions p. 556 - 57 • 1. Done from appropriate motive. • 2. Having exhausted all internal channels first, except in special circumstances. • 3. Whistleblower has compelling evidence. • 4. Whistleblower acts after careful analysis of the danger. • 5. Whistleblowing has some chance of success (at stopping the danger).

  9. Questions: • Does internal count (i.e., is it even w-b)? • Is w-b necessarily disloyal? • Must it be voluntary? • Under what conditions is it justified? • Need it be motivated by moral concern to be justified?

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